If you go down in the flood (it's gonna be your own fault)

This photo has been doing the internet rounds. Since I've owned both cats and birds, I can relate. I like the spread-out paw on the "mouse" (heh-heh) with claws just showing, along with the tip of the tongue. This is funny, but it illustrates a point, the kind Chris Hansen has dealt with on Dateline.

On the internet, you can be whoever-the-hell you want to be.

On Facebook, I've seen the kind of swagger I don't think I would ever see in person. Quite often it takes the form of blatant personal narcissism. More than once I've seen women "model" dresses they're going to wear to awards banquets (awards they're shortlisted for, they always point out). I've seen shoes, I've seen handbags, but the dresses are the worst. The women are either posed seductively with one shoulder-strap falling down,  staring into the camera in a predatory manner (and these are usually women over 60), or draped over the hood of a car with their tits up like Jane Russell.  A few are posed in the t-square, 3/4 position we were all told to assume in the Nancy 
Taylor Charm Course. 

I recently saw a post by a woman who described herself, or at least her dress, as "gorgeous". She was well into middle age, stout, and wore a floral dress that made her look like a sofa.

But the point is: would she walk into a dinner party and say, "Look, everybody. Aren't I gorgeous?" Yet in every single case, her sycophants chorused things like, "Awesome!" "You go, girl!" and things like that. 

What does this mean?

It means that the narcissism gene which is latent in most of us has been given free rein. Once again we can go to our own birthday party in a fluffy dress and swing our feet in their Mary Janes, squeaking, "Ooooh, look at me, everybody! I'm prettier than you!"

Well. . . no.

So what's wrong with praising your own beauty? Haven't mental health care professionals been honking at us for decades to love ourselves, to see ourselves as innately worthy no matter what we do? Why has this always bothered me? Because it's sickening, that's why. It's shallow and essentially untrue. At the heart of most people (and believe me, after 60 years on the planet I know this) lies darkness.

Civilization means subjugating this darkness whenever we can.

I saw a ridiculous program the other night called The History of the World in Two Hours. It was stupid because it was really at least two programs in one, and should have been called The Vastly-Oversimplified History of the Universe, followed by Why Humans Feel Entitled to Completely Destroy the World.

The early physics blather was almost OK, though since I'm married to a man with a Masters in biochemistry, I saw glaring errors in it. How did the first cells of life ever wink into existence? It wasn't explained at all. Suddenly there was this big sloppy edit in the middle of the show, and then they were talking about DNA (a nonsensical leap over the Grand Canyon, since it hadn't been set up at all). 

There was absolutely nothing about the various theories of how life began (and after all, since nobody was around with a Smartphone snapping photos, our information comes down to educated guesses). The most plausible guess involves the existence of chemicals in seawater which gradually formed tiny strands of nucleic acid. Not DNA, not by any stretch, but perhaps its multi-billions-of-years'-distant cousin. 

There was, however, a lot of comical blather from "scientists", the usual suspects rounded up (including a guy with a grey beard and an Indiana Jones hat who looks like Gabby Hayes, and who is on EVERY science show to explain paleontology in ludicrously dumbed-down terms) to tell us all that "bacteria are our common ancestor. We ALL came from bacteria. No, really!"

There were things even more offensive than the idea that cold germs were our great-great-great-googol-grandparents (and yes, you fucking idiots, I AM spelling that right - "google" is a misspelling, not deliberate but just goddamn stupid). Massive chunks were left out of this "history", such as anything to do with art or even valid science. No astronomy, no medicine, no nothing. It was all (ALL) technology and how wonderful Man was to have invented these marvelous things. 

It got worse. Never once were women mentioned. I have heard a quite plausible theory that women invented agriculture. While Thugg and Uck were out there trying to kill water buffalo by throwing rocks at them, the women were doing the spectacularly unimportant task of bringing the next generation of humans into the world. As they did so, they were constantly gathering the plant sources that kept the tribe alive while Thugg and Uck killed each other because they didn't know how to throw. 

Being smart survivors and tied to the soil, women noticed over time that they could actually coax things to grow where they wanted. Guess what this lead to! But no! This whole program was dedicated to shallow, self-congratulatory male strutting, exalting the technology which is now on the verge of destroying us all. 

It was all good, you see. All swagger, male swagger in particular. The internal combustion engine was held up as the very pinnacle of man's amazing achievements, with no mention at all of the megatons of poison it belches into the air every single day.

Anyway, to me it was just a reflection of the shallow narcissism and lack of touch with reality we now see everywhere. I wonder, honestly wonder if the human race isn't being seriously and permanently degraded. As the ice caps continue their relentless melt (and why on earth are they melting? Why do we get all these freakish floods and tornados? I'm sure I don't know), most of the European treasures of art and architecture on which human culture was supposedly founded will be swept away forever. We'll have a few reproductions left, probably posted on Facebook, and after all, aren't they just as good?

Bob Dylan said it thirty years ago: "If you go down in the flood, it's gonna be your own fault." As usual, the little bastard was right.

P. S. A rather sickening coda, sickening to me because once again it reflects the happily ignorant, slipshod quasi-knowledge that abounds in this wonderful century. Speaking of how it all began, get a load of this internet explanation:

The story of Google – Sergey Brin and Larry Page; what started as the two of them looking for a project to do their final paper. It was a requirement for them to get their Phd degrees in Stanford. Sergey and Larry found that there is a problem on the current (in mid 90’s) search engine. The search results were non-efficiency and the result was coming up at a slow speed. So they decided to pick that as their project to do their Phd paper on.  

 Sergey and Larry started to look at the search technology based on a new idea: A relevant result comes from context. They started their own search engine (they called it ‘Back Rub’) as a test servicing the Campus. Eventually their search engine project got so big and that they have to move it out of the Stanford Campus. Both Sergey and Larry left Stanford to take care of their booming business.

One day the young men were brain storming for a name for their company. And Larry said Google – It means the number represented by a 1 followed by one-hundred Zeros. So they did a Domain Look up and registered Google.com right away. Later Larry and Sergey realized that the spelling on their Domain name was misspelled. The correct spelling is “Googol” But does it matter!?

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Weird or. . . ?

No, this post isn't about William Shatner (much), or the Loch Ness Monster or All-Bran Cereal or any of the other fine products he's pushed over nearly 80 years. I can just see him lumbering around, looking not so much like a fat octanogerianerean (or however the bleep that's spelled - 80 years old, anyway) as a fat, lumbering seventyarian. In other words, he's pretty well-preserved.

What I really want to write about are the twists and turns, the contradictions that drive writers mad. I just finished reading an article in the Huffington Post (give it a try if you haven't seen it - I'm still trying to figure out their mandate), by some writer-or-other - hell, my memory is lousy these days, but I think her name was Muffy - who in essence is saying that writers should suck it up, quit their bellyaching and get down to the nitty-gritty of sending out their manuscripts (one by one, by post, with a stamped, self-addressed envelope: "You do want your manuscript returned, don't you?" reads the withering directions on one publisher's web site), rather than bitching away on Twitter and Tweeter and Woofer and all those other sociable networks about how publishers are rotten and unfair and don't understand genius when they see it.

At the same time, feeling in much the same state myself (after sending out one too many stamped self-addressed envelopes and having them seemingly disappear), I sent a distress-call to one of my favorite writers. One of the best in the country, as far as I am concerned, with an impeccable track record of beautifully-wrought, gripping novels. I've reviewed several of them, and every time I was assigned one I thought, "ahh, I'm in for a good ride." And I was never disappointed.

This selfsame writer answered my moaning email with, in essence, this statement: I'm going through exactly the same thing. Publishers have turned me down repeatedly, and agents just aren't interested. A good, even a great track record means essentially nothing. The industry has tightened up so much, there's so much anxiety about survival that they want a "sure thing", something that will rake in as much money as possible.

I don't want to dump on publishers. They're doing business, for heaven's sake, or trying to, in a culture that is reading less and less. In no other field would there be such nasty criticism of the need to make a profit in order to survive. It's almost as bad as the head-shaking writers provoke by insisting that they want to be published. Shouldn't art be its own reward? What kind of egotist actually wants to see his work in print, or needs people to read it?

There's another factor at work here. I can only imagine how many unsolicited manuscripts every publisher (micro to macro) is constantly deluged with. Most probably aren't readable, let alone publishable. Somehow they have to pick through all this and find books, real books that might work on the shelves. Books someone might want to buy.

But at the same time, I get a feeling of a deep disconnect between the lightning communication of 2010 and the horse-and-buggy approach of the SASE and the printed-out, mailed manuscript (each setting the writer back about $12). Something ain't adding up. And success is getting more dicey with each passing year.

The whole field is. . . weird. . . or what.

I think William Shatner should investigate this, give it one of his histrionic voiceovers, one of his "hey-I'm-just-in-this-for-the-money" things. He should have some scientist slide over a giant ice field with his breath puffing out in clouds. He should show rare fossils (Shatner? - or editors who've been around too long?). Lights should flash in the sky, probably some kid with a flashlight, but never mind, that's pretty weird in itself, isn't it?

Writers have to be: tough but sensitive; not care what anyone thinks (art!!), but constantly and feverishly working to get attention; solitary (sit alone at the keykboard for hours) but sociable (get out there and mingle and work the room!). They have to be so many opposite things that it's no wonder so many of them go crazy.

Getting published is the Holy Grail, and sooooo many writers seek it, the "cuppa Christ" Indiana Jones craved. They just assume that, once they get their hands on it, everything will go smoothly from then on. (Haven't I written about all this before? Sorry. This one is really about William Shatner.) The truth is much more complicated. I don't feel so alone now, knowing that one of the foremost writers in this country is having a lot of trouble getting his books in print. But I also feel somewhat gobsmacked.

I shall have to regroup.

Like some nut, I won't quit, because this is what I do. But I have to say, this field I'm in is the strangest I've ever heard of, full of impossible twists and turns. Publishers want something original, of course. Not the usual boring stuff. At the same time, they want a sure thing, "more of the same", so that their ready-made audience will keep buying books. Harry Potter sells better than Campbell's Soup.

I don't have Twitter or Tweeter or whatever that stuff is, marking me either as a dinosaur or as someone with a whole brain who doesn't communicate in idiotic, ungrammatical fragments. (Is that why people can't get published? Do they think a novel is just a series of glued-together tweets?) So I'm hopelessly behind, and no one will ever know who I am. It took me centuries to decide to write a blog, and I don't think I have a huge fan base. I keep doing it anyway, mostly because it's pretty enjoyable and a great way to dodge my real work (which is, right now, letting publishers know that I have the best novel in 30 years tucked under my arm and will let them see it if they ask real nice.)

Oops, I said this was about William Shatner. William Shatner has written novels. Well, sort of. Someone writes them for him, just as someone eats All-Bran for him. He just provides story ideas, probably retreads of the original Trek series (which I'm watching again, and enjoying hugely - it wasn't as tacky as people say it was, and broke a lot of new ground).

I kind of like the fact that this actor was working steadily in 1966 (and '67, and '77, and '87, and. . . ), and in essence has never stopped. Self-parody doesn't bother him, and somehow or other he has mastered the art of marketing the Shatner brand. And he will probably go on until he drops.

Smart. . . or what?

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POSTSCRIPT. These things always come on a bad day, somehow. I just got a statement from my first publisher stating the amount of royalties earned and the number of copies sold in the past year. The royalties totalled almost -$100.00 (yes, MINUS a hundred), and the number of copies sold worldwide was two.

Reviewers called the novel "a contender for the Leacock medal", its style/charm/allthatstuff comparable to Ann Marie MacDonald (an Oprah pick) and Gail Anderson-Dargatz. "Fiction at its finest". Now, do I really owe them a hundred bucks???